a faulty rubber shield
by axoplasmic
Summary: Strawhat's conflagration will spit out the passive embers who are not swept up in his fiery pace and they will be left to snuff out slowly on the sidelines of his assail. Law refuses to be an ember. {prompt from trell (dreamwidth: a-lonely-doctor): "i thought i'd lost you" lawlu if you squint? law's perspective in the aftermath of marineford. slight canon divergence. not beta read}


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A/N - This is from a prompt on dreamwidth for "take me with you to the sea", a winter ficathon that I thought would be nice to participate in. I'll paste the link on my profile for those who wish to participate!

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Trafalgar Law doesn't find himself scared of many things. His intimacy with an insatiable desire for death may lend to that, but giving it any thought means entertaining fear and _weakness_. Law is not weak. (Not even when he wakes up smothering hoarse screams in his throat, not even when his limbs tremor as he curls into himself to stop pain that isn't there, not even when he keeps his eyes open yet all he can see is burnt flesh and little bodies and _whitewhitewhite_ —)

With Strawhat Luffy before him, a cavernous hole in his stomach and dried blood on his lips, he is scared.

Strawhat is not important to him. The boy is interesting; compelling, passionate, _refreshing_ , an impossible force of being he can't entirely wrap his head around. But not important. There is a thrum in Law's chest, however; an off-key beat that pulsates in his ears, that makes his fingertips throb; a full bodied palpitation, one that tries to burst his veins, that screams at him to take action.

 _(To save Strawhat.)_

Law doesn't know where this compulsion stems from. A chance meeting on Sabaody, a spark of intrigue, a pull in his very marrow – these mean nothing in a pirate's world. There are those who will benefit him and those who must be eliminated. But Strawhat, with his scraped fists and raw tenacity, his _life_ , he etches himself into every corner of Law's mind.

(Because _life_ isn't a concept the Surgeon of Death is familiar with, yet Strawhat _teems_ with a burning desire to live. Inside him is a flame that blankets those who come near and is unleashed wherever he goes. He is an inferno, spreading himself as far as he can reach and setting the sky ablaze with his presence. Strawhat's conflagration will spit out the passive embers who are not swept up in his fiery pace and they will be left to snuff out slowly on the sidelines of his assail.

Law refuses to be an ember.)

That impression drags him to Marineford in the aftermath of a cataclysmic war ( _Whitebeard's death will shake the world to its very **core**_ ) with a visceral need to make sure that Strawhat _does not die_. Not after this. Not after he rips his way through the forerunners of their generation and makes it out— _makes it out barely alive, covered in blood that is only his, makes it out broken, shattered in a way Law sees in himself on the sparse occasions he forces himself to look in the mirror, but Strawhat_ —

He makes it out. For this, he must continue living. With magma having speared his stomach, though, there is slim chance of that. (Law pushes the words _primum nil nocere_ out of his mind as he starts his work.)

As he makes more and more incisions, he realizes the bloody body before him is injured far beyond what Akainu has done. Twisted and burnt flesh sits at the base of Strawhat's breast, but within his Room Law sees that each rubber muscle is tense and hypertrophied, pumped with fatal amounts of vasopressin, cortisol, and catecholamine hormones.

 _(Doesn't he know that a body made of rubber is not a shield from the world?)_

The damage Strawhat has accumulated is unbelievable. His body almost shuts down multiple times and Law doesn't know if he will survive because he is _mutilated_ , afflicted with so much inordinate physical trauma that there may be nothing that will resuscitate him. The procedure is demanding, each suture welling consternation in Law's chest. But there is another emotion beside the fear; it brushes his skin as Strawhat lies beneath him on an operating table, it tells him that he's the only one who can save the boy.

Six hours of work leave Strawhat connected to a myriad of IV tubes and a ventilator, nigh exsanguinated. The fact that the most Law can do is leave him lying shallow-breathed in bloodied sheets curdles astringency in his throat.

He did not operate on Strawhat Luffy out of obligation, but a reason he doesn't yet know. Two weeks pass by in anxious waiting and acrid doubt. ( _What if he doesn't make it?_ ) Skipped heartbeats, mild seizures, bloody coughs: they're all hell.

And then, in the way it seems only Strawhat can make happen, the tides shift.

He awakens in a fit of hazy delusion looking for his dead brother and something twisted unfurls in Law's chest _(eats him out from the inside and says, 'he is broken just like you are' and hurts **so much** )_. Strawhat runs into the forest of Amazon Lily and gambles his life with every step. The aid Law has provided is first rate, but those wounds are more severe than bandages and two weeks of intensive rest can mitigate. They are likely to open up, and he is likely to die.

Strawhat's screams boom across the island. Law knows that Monkey D. Luffy might shatter into irreparable pieces, might become a person so far away from himself that the name rings hollow, might _die both inside and out_ —

The thought knocks the breath out of him in a way just shy of debilitating.

The Knight of the Sea treads after him and Law waits. That infamous straw hat sits on the ground near his feet and he picks it up. He knows that this hat is significant, anyone who sails the ocean does, but having it in his grasp is another experience entirely. It's worn. Flimsy between his fingers and bleached by the sun. Stitched up in a few areas. He tries not to think about what he's done to Strawhat. Tries not to think about the scent of corpses in a dead city far away, clinging to his nose for days ( _weeks months years_ ) afterward. Tries so hard to block the feeling of shame that comes with knowing that Strawhat will have to live with a ubiquitous void behind him. Will constantly be reminded that he was the one who survived.

Strawhat's screams quiet.

He exits the forest riding on the excommunicated Warlord's back and Law meets his eyes. They are black like pitch, resonant with a mix of emotion he can't readily discern, but they are Strawhat Luffy's. Brightly, his resolution and the Will shine. The relief that swims through Law is welcomed as he gives back the straw hat. Their fingers connect for a moment ( _they're warm_ ) and Strawhat beams.

The radiance of his smile makes Law feel a little less like death.

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A/N - It is honestly 3am and I am never coming back to this so forgive me if it's awful. Reviews nourish me, though. So there's that.


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